Mamaskatch was an utterly mesmerizing book told in a series of linked vignettes, like the stories the author grew up hearing from his mother. McLeod is honest about the incredibly complex life experiences he had growing up Cree in Alberta in small towns and big cities. He does not shy away from the difficulties he had in his relationships with family members – especially his mother and siblings – or other people around him, and he is raw and explicit about the abuse he suffered and its aftereffects.

And yet, he never overwhelms the reader, just as his spirit was never overtaken by those times of darkness and pain. He is searching and tender and empathetic, while never absolving anyone of their responsibility. And there is always a sense of humour. Sometimes McLeod delivers these punchlines at the ends of chapters, and they really do hit you with theiry wry poignance.

Author Darrel McLeod has also woven in his love of music and language, and captures accents and ways of speaking in a pitch-perfect way. His scenes are vivid and richly rendered, and his prose is as bracing as a cold Alberta stream. I am so glad I was able to spend time with this brave, optimistic and smart “young Darrel”, and to watch as he overcame life’s struggles with his trademark optimism – yet realism – to become a whole, caring man. I can’t wait to read the follow-up to this book, and anything else McLeod decides to share with the world.

Thou Shalt Do No MurderInuit, Injustice, and the Canadian Arctic
Reviewed by Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail

Thou Shalt Do No Murder: Inuit, Injustice, and the Canadian Arctic
by Kenn Harper
Nunavut Arctic College Media, 452 pages, $38.95

In 1923, three Inuit men were put on trial at Pond Inlet, on Baffin island, for the killing of qallunaat (white) trader Robert Janes. This story is not widely known outside the North, but it has fascinated me ever since I discovered Shelagh D. Grant’s book Arctic Justice over a decade ago.

Kenn Harper has been gripped by this history for much longer and has produced a hefty tome entitled Thou Shalt Do No Murder: Inuit, Injustice, and the Canadian Arctic.

Harper has lived in the Arctic for fifty years, working as a teacher, historian, linguist, and businessman. He speaks Inuktitut and is the author of the bestselling Give Me My Father’s Body (recently republished as Minik: The New York Eskimo and optioned for film).
He first heard of the Pond Inlet trial in the 1970s, shortly after he moved north. It is clear both from the text and from his bibliography that Harper has immersed himself in this history via many hours spent with Inuit elders and much time in archives.
One of those elders, Jimmy Etuk, was alive when the killing and the trial took place. It is Etuk who begins the book in gripping style. His “speech was volcanic,” Harper tells us, as Etuk launches into the tale of Robert Janes’ descent into apparent madness and the circumstances that apparently forced Nuqallaq and two other Inuit men to end his life.

To read the full review, as it appeared in the October-November 2018 issue of Canada’s History, please click here.

I am very pleased to be joining a distinguished panel of public historians, community activators and scholars next month at the annual meeting of the National Council of Public Historians. Our topic, Sharing Power: Reconciling Indigenous-Settler Narratives is near and dear to my heart, as is long-time collaborator and friend Miranda Jimmy, who will be making the trek from Edmonton.

In addition to Miranda and I, there’s the panel convener, Jean-Pierre Morin, and a bunch of other Indigenous and non-Indigenous folks from both sides of the 49th Parallel: Krista McCracken,
Brittani Orona, Morgen Young, James Grant, Patrick Moore, Aaron Roth, and Manuelito Wheeler.

Really honoured to have my first (unpublished) young adult book, Sky Girl, place in this contest. I know it’s a tough competition with entries from talented emerging voices from around the world. Thanks to the West Houston chapter of the Romance Writers of America for coordinating all the submissions and judges, and to the first- and second-round judges in my category who provided such useful feedback – and much-needed encouragement!

Off to work on my ninth(!) rewrite of this novel, which I’ve been researching and writing since 2009. The process has been tough but it’s taught me so much about how to merge my love of history with storytelling. And I have loved every minute of deep research into the amazing female bush pilots and ferry pilots from the Second World War. Hopefully version 9.0 will see all those parts click into place and I’ll be able to share this story with all of you soon.

Oh – and before I forget! A big congratulations to my friend and fellow writer, Laura Mitzner, who snagged second place with her darkly funny contemporary YA novel, Because Heaven is Just Hearsay.

Demons and Better Angels: Finding the Path to Our Truest Stories (and a Little Bit of Peace of Mind)

In this session, I will share my breakdowns and breakthroughs, and offer some of the best wisdom and tools I’ve discovered for getting past blocks and continuing to tell the stories that matter most to me. This will include the heartbreak of rejection and critique, dealing with mental health, and struggling with writing and researching stories outside my experience.

And I promise to do it all with lots of dark humour (and dark chocolate)!

I’m very pleased to be part of this event at the Sienna Plantation Public Library in Missouri City, Texas. It’s FREE and open to the public. While it’s especially geared toward students in grades 9 through 12, there will also be lots of great information for adults who are considering new education or career possibilities.

Come with your burning questions and your curiosity! I have had a random, adventure-filled career so far and am excited to share the good, the bad, and the ugly with you!

Careers in Focus: The Arts 3/24/2018 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM

Are you considering a career in the arts? Join us as a panel of professionals shares their experiences working in different areas of the artistic field. This program will include brief presentations by professionals with arts-related careers, a Q&A session, and time for break out sessions.

In recognition of Women’s History Month in March, George Memorial Library in Richmond will present a special program, “The History of Women in Aviation,” on Thursday, March 22, beginning at 7:00 pm, in the Meeting Room of the library.

In her presentation, local author and aviation historian Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail will showcase some of the famous (and not-so-famous) women from around the world who have made an impact in the aviation industry in times of peace and of war.

“From the earliest days of aviation, there have been women who have wanted to walk on wings, soar in balloons, tinker with engines, and – of course – fly,” says Metcalfe-Chenail, who shares her love for aviation history in her books For the Love of Flying, Polar Winds, and the forthcoming picture book, Alis the Aviator: The ABCs of Flight.

As the former Historian Laureate of Edmonton, Alberta, and the former president of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society, Metcalfe-Chenail was able to combine her graduate degree in history with her passion for writing and aviation history.

This program is made possible by the generous support of the Friends of the George Memorial Library. Proceeds from the Friends of the Library book sales and annual membership dues help to underwrite the costs of special programming and various cultural events at the library.

The program is free and open to the public. For more information, call George Memorial Library at 281-342-4455 or the library system’s Communications Office at 281-633-4734. Richmond is in Fort Bend County outside of Houston, Texas.

If you can’t make it, but you’d like to learn more about women in the history of military aviation in Canada, check out this article I wrote for Legion Magazine last year called “The Job for Me”!

Members of Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame are selected for their contributions to Canada’s development through their integral roles in the nation’s aviation history. The inductees in 2018 will join the ranks of the 228 esteemed men and women inducted since the Hall’s formation in 1973, bringing to 232 the total number of individual Members of the Hall. For more on the CAHF and the men and women who are members already, check out www.cahf.ca.

“In 2018 we will again be honouring four Canadians for their outstanding places in Canadian aviation,” says Hall of Fame board chairman, Rod Sheridan. “Their careers over several decades span a wide breadth of both military and civilian aviation. They have contributed to the building of airlines and aviation organizations, leadership in the air force, management of industry, development of aviation systems and establishment of air rescue services.”
Plans for the annual gala dinner event and induction ceremonies are well underway. “We expect another complete sell-out for the celebration in Calgary,” says Rod Sheridan, “and I encourage early purchase of tickets for this premiere celebration of Canadian aviation development.”
The four individuals to be installed as Members of the Hall in 2018 are:

Gen Paul D. Manson, O.C., CMM, CD

Dr. John M. Maris

Dr. Dwight Gregory Powell, O.C.

And, of course…Mr. John M. Bogie
Born into an aviation family in the United States, John Bogie has made his home in Canada since the early 1950s, following service in the United States Navy, work as an airport operator, and as a very young charter pilot. In Canada, he quickly made a name for his charter and resource exploration work for Laurentian Air Services and Spartan Air Services, including the flight that identified the major iron deposit at Gagnon, Quebec.
Complementing his civilian flying, in 1952 Bogie became, with Margaret Carson, a co-founder of the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association (COPA), serving as its first President and Chairman. Since that time, he has been an unswerving supporter of COPA, seeing it grow from modest beginnings to some 17,000 members.
He served in most of COPA’s executive capacities and continues as an honorary director and life member. He still attends as many COPA events as he can, now into his 90s. His COPA accomplishments include simplified medicals for pilots and aviation liability group insurance now used by commercial carriers.
John helped to create the Experimental Aircraft Association Canada organization, as well as a civilian pilot group for Search and Rescue as an adjunct to the military. Another entity he helped bring into being was the Canadian Business Aircraft Association (CBAA), first as an arm of COPA and then as a distinct entity. His Laurentian Air Services career ultimately took him to the presidency, to many initiatives to diversify its operations and to embrace the bilingual nature of the environment in which his company operated.
A subsequent stroke of initiative allowed him to buy a large consignment of ex-US Army Beavers which were rebuilt and put onto the Canadian market. This constituted the largest single aircraft purchase of its kind in Canada and made Laurentian the Canadian centre for Beaver activity. John Bogie has continued to support Canadian aviation long after his retirement in 1992. He continues to enjoy the respect and affection of the aviation community to this day.

If you’d like to learn more about John Bogie, Laurentian Air Services, and bush flying, check out my book, For the Love of Flying!

I’m just back from a whirlwind trip to Ottawa-Gatineau where I got to emcee the 10th annual Canada’s History Forum and gala. They were held at the Canadian Museum of History on the Quebec side, and it was a stimulating and inspiring series of events. At the heart of it all, I felt, were discussions about collaboration, respect and relationships.

If you’d like to learn more about the programme, speakers, projects and see recordings, please visit: http://www.canadashistory.ca/

Thankful that Canada’s History purchased 15 copies of In This Together, the collection of essays I edited last year, to give to speakers as gifts. Also incredibly grateful to have met Elder Claudette Commanda of the Kitigan Zibi Nation, who welcomed us to the Algonquin territory.

The theme was “Making History Relevant”, and the practical applications in government departments, classrooms, and in broader society. Perhaps nowhere is history more relevant than reconciliation and social justice, so it should come as no surprise that many of the topics focused on community projects involving First Nations and Metis partners/leaders – as well as the troubling situation in Poland about the history of the Holocaust, and the chilling effect legislation is having on free speech and scholarly investigations.

The following day at Rideau Hall, the newish Governor General, Julie Payette gave a rousing talk in English, French, and a bit of Anishnaabewomin about the importance of evidence-based history. I think we were all ready to follow her into orbit (and yes, there were at least three witty ‘space jokes’ during acceptance speeches).

I was particularly pleased to learn about the Indigenous Arts and Stories winners, as well as the awards that went to Dr. Sarah Carter (whose book on captivity narratives blew me away in undergrad) and Daniel Francis, a popularizer of history whose book Imaginary Indians was seminal for my understanding of stereotyping and how we construct identity. These are two of the titles who helped push me toward cultural and social history!

I can’t wait to be a speaker at the National Council for Public History’s conference in Las Vegas in April, and keep connecting with folks who are digging deep into our past – and investigating how we remember. Maybe I’ll see you there!

GG02-2017-0417-065 November 22, 2017 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Her Excellency the Right Honourable Julie Payette, Governor General of Canada, presented teachers and other outstanding Canadians with the 2017 Governor Generals History Awards for their efforts to further an interest in and understanding of Canadian history and heritage. The awards was presented at a ceremony at Rideau Hall, on Wednesday, November 22, 2017. Credit: MCpl Vincent Carbonneau, Rideau Hall, OSGG

When Rhonda Parrish moved in next to the Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta – reputed to be the most haunted building in the city – the seeds were sown for this book. From there, it took just a brief conversation between Parrish and Mark Leslie, author of Creepy Capital and Tomes of Terror, for the two writers to team up on Haunted Hospitals: Eerie Tales about Hospitals, Sanatoriums, and Other Institutions.

As Parrish notes in her introduction, “Day after day the most extreme of human experiences play out within the walls of hospitals. The most intense emotions are experienced again and again. Birth. Death. Trauma. Suffering.” It’s little wonder, then, that so many stories of paranormal happenings are tied to these institutions.

This nonfiction book is a compendium of stories drawn from interviews, forum and website posts, books of ghost stories, and videos from shows like Ghost Hunters. It is clear that Parrish and Leslie (both curious skeptics) cast their net wide and did a lot of research to bring some of the most notable and chilling tales from haunted hospitals, asylums, as well as prisons that housed the criminally insane.

These stories span two hundred years and come from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Italy, and in many ways feel like a ghost tour you might take on vacation or in your own city around Halloween. Some tales are quite involved and Parrish’s talents as a speculative fiction writer are on full display. You can imagine strolling through the streets of Montreal to the student residence repurposed from a hospital/orphanage where over fifty children burned to death in 1918. You can picture navigating mazes of tunnels beneath sprawling institutions, past the body chutes and the basement rooms where especially unruly patients might be shackled in earlier times. Other entries are more like quick stops along the way, a short blurb in a haunted guidebook (this is especially the case with the ‘Prisons’ section at the end of the book).

As with ghost tours, Haunted Hospitals, is also a great ‘gateway drug’ for those of us interested in history, medical ethics, and how societies have viewed and treated physical and mental illness. It offers good historical context and facts about the buildings as well, and touches on controversies around redevelopment, urban planning, and whether people should use these institutions for haunted tours and other ‘terror lite’ experiences.

Parrish and Leslie challenge us to imagine what it’s like for cities and institutions overwhelmed by tuberculosis, Spanish Flu and the plague to deal in a humane manner with patients. And while they dedicate the book to medical professionals who devote their lives to healing, they face issues of overcrowding, neglect, and patient abuse head on, as well as allegations of medical research and experimentation.

There were two stories, however, where more digging and contextualization (and a bit less sensationalism) was needed. First, the tale of ‘Nurse Emmie’ at Rolling Hills Asylum, a purported member of a ‘satanic coven’, seems to lean heavily on the 1990s-era hysteria over satanic cults that proved to be mostly unfounded. Second, the transcribed 1935 news story of Dr. H.E. Zimmerly in Pennsylvania is problematic. If you have some background on the history of women’s reproductive health, it sounds very much like he was simply performing abortions – illegal at the time – for poor young women with nowhere safer to turn. These were terrifying, of course, but in a different way than the story might have intended.

Like haunted tours of these hospitals and the communities that surround them, it’s tricky to balance the entertainment factor of creepy stories with the history and deeper meanings within them. Generally, Parrish and Leslie do a good job walking this line, giving us the chills we crave while educating us about changing ideas of medical care, criminalization, and mental illness.

This is a fun and thoughtful book, and anyone interested in medicine mixed with the paranormal will find stories to stimulate the imagination – and give you goosebumps.